He was driving a car. It wasn’t the Wraith, nor was it the Cavalier, but it was all the same a perfectly ordinary car.

Hell if he knew where he was or what the traffic was like, because that wasn’t on his mind, so he didn’t see it or know it or think anything about it. And because he wasn’t thinking about it, he just kept driving.

Cedric liked driving, and maybe it was true he didn’t prefer to drive the Wraith, though that was the only car he’d driven lately, but he’d gotten used to it. When Davian asked him to cart the two of them around town, he did it gladly.

When Cedric was driving the car, he was just part of the machine, and that felt right because he had a job to do, and he had a very real place in it. And maybe he wasn’t completely in control, because Davian always always had an opinion about where they should go and how fast and what side of the street one should drive on and when to cross over and where and when he should and shouldn’t make a turn because this street was one-way and that other one was two-way but was really too narrow to be a two-way so he shouldn’t—

And in this strange car, a car he didn’t recognize but knew how to drive anyway, he just kept going.

He didn’t really know what was outside the car, but he did know what was inside the car, or at least he thought he did. The seats were cloth—

[ they get dirty ]

No the ones in the back were leather weren’t they even if the ones in the front were cloth.

And maybe he was gonna tune the radio, because sometimes almost anything was better than silence, sometimes, so he took his hand and raised it up and went toward the buttons and numbers where he should have had something saved—

[ one two three f… ]

Someone else had set the stations, hadn’t they or maybe they were set for a city or town that was really far back from here, and if he pushed the buttons all he was gonna get was s-s-static because they didn’t match didn’t match and he hated the static got away from the static so he didn’t even p—

[ push it push it ]

But he didn’t want to push it, so he didn’t and he just kept driving but he didn’t stop looking and because he didn’t stop looking he noticed there was a collar around the rearview mirror.

[ “dog” ]

But he didn’t put it there.

[ what ]

And since he didn’t put it there, he didn’t think he should take it down either because it probably definitely belonged to someone else. So he didn’t take it down, but he didn’t like it there either, because it hung down and obstructed the glass and made it so there was something in his field of view when he was trying to see out the front windshield and he needed to see out the front windshield because dammit that was how he had to drive the car and if you couldn’t see then—

And the collar was getting bigger, wasn’t it?

[ one two thr… ]

There were holes in the collar, and they were counting

No, he was counting them

And he knew he was counting them because they kept going and growing and the collar had to get bigger and bigger because the collar didn’t fit anymore and he had to make it fit he just had to make it fit because otherwise

Which way were the holes going? Which way was he counting?

Cedric hadn’t put the collar up there. But he knew he was the only one who could take it down.

He just had to find it first.

[ one two ]

find it.

[ one ]

“Hey Cedric. How are you? Are you feeling any better?”

Cedric drew air into his nose because he was attempting to sniffle: a reflex to her question, an instinct to prove… something. But he got air because although he could certainly still remember having been sick, his nose wasn’t running anymore.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m doing better than I was.”

“Glad to hear it,” Eloise said. “I was worried about you. For a while there you seemed pretty hard up.”

Somewhere on the second floor of the house, Friday erupted in laughter. And because they were on the first floor, Cedric didn’t have any idea what she was laughing at, but the sound she made filled the house for a second or two and then it stopped.

“I was wondering, since you’re feeling better,” Eloise said to him, “if you’d come to church with me today.”

Although he tried to appear nonchalant, that question hit him like a gut-punch.

“Me?” he asked. “Uh…”

He didn’t really know what to say, and his voice was low. He didn’t usually do such things on Sundays, or any other day for that matter, and that was the way he liked it. But here she was, asking him anyway, doing something she’d never yet done in the time he’d lived here.

“I don’t really think they want someone like, uh—” he stammered, “like me in the church.” He thought it was obvious what he was trying to say, but she didn’t seem to understand his implication.

Eloise’s face was gentle. “Ced…” she said, as if she were talking to a little child. “They don’t check your card at the door.”

She was making a joke, and it embarrassed him, so his lips flattened against themselves involuntarily.

“Everyone has doubts, and none of us have all the answers,” she said. “Not anyone. And sometimes it’s the people who say they’ve never had problems being faithful that you shouldn’t trust.”

He still didn’t want to go. He still… didn’t… want to go.

“You should read Augustine,” she said. “Confessions. It’s long, but it’s worth it.”

She added, “It’s one of my favorites.”

Cedric thought about the bookshelves that lined the house, and the titles, and how many forbade his comprehension because he couldn’t do the things that they could do.

“I can’t—” he said timidly, “translate.”

Her eyes were soft, and turned up a little at the edges, because she was looking at him and trying to make him feel better.

“If you’d read it,” she said, “I’d find you a copy in English.”

Cedric was not a fan of singing in church.

He hadn’t thought this would be expected of him — heck — he hadn’t thought much at all if he were being completely honest. He had gone with Eloise because she so rarely asked things of him, and when she did, he thought she must have asked because it was important to her, and if it was important to her, it was still more important that he didn’t say ‘No, thank you’. So when they sat down on the pews and didn’t say much to each other, because he supposed that wasn’t what they were supposed to do on an occasion such as this, he looked at her through the corner of his eye and Eloise was looking completely relaxed and content and even cheerful, like she’d been here a hundred times before.

Like this was the place she’d waited all week to be.

Eventually they turned away from each other and looked stiffly forward — or, at least, Cedric felt that rigidity and tension and resistance within his muscles — and there weren’t many people in the church but when the few that there were looked away and toward the front, it was easy for Cedric to pretend, if only for a moment, that it was just the two of them, she and he, there in the church on the street in the borough that held some several other million bodies. And despite it all, everything was going just well and fine and dandy until she didn’t hand him the Bible.

The Bible? He was prepared for the thees and thou art or whatever that text had to offer him. He figured either Methuselah had been some other asshole Mage who’d found the holy grail, or someone had falsified the accounting in a time and place where no one else could present their own version of the story. And a falsified account was one thing.

Singing was quite another.

When Eloise put her hand into the little wooden pocket and removed the other burgundy book, the one that didn’t describe itself as ‘holy’, it struck him. And she passed the book to him, that tattered hymnal, and he took it, though it was the last thing in the world he figured he wanted, and he stood, though he didn’t really want to do that either. He thought that maybe he could just mouth the words and make a pass at playing pretend and since no one was looking directly at him, no one was going to poke him in the side and chide him for what he didn’t know. He’d done it before, he thought, and he could do it again.

No, he realized; here, he couldn’t do it again.

Sure, he could read the words, he guessed, though they were making allusions and references to stories and scripture that went over his head. So the shape of his lips was right and some words came out, but the notes were all wrong because he had never been taught how to read sheet music. For all he knew, they could take the A, B, Cs and skip to an F, because that’s about as far as he would get, even if he’d heard a while back that Ds got degrees.

Eventually, the singing was over, and it was time to sit back down, and when everyone else sat down, the two of them did too. And at first he felt relief because he was sitting and listening and still and he didn’t have to do anything and Eloise wouldn’t hear him sing off-key because he was being silent and keeping his mouth shut.

She turned her head to look at him with her eyes and her nose and her hair that was a little shorter this year than it had been in the past, and Cedric saw some stained windows behind her that made the blues and purples in her dress brighter than they had seemed in the old dusty house from which they’d come. She smiled a little at him, and he tried to return her expression, but when the lecture began, she looked at where the words were coming from, and he felt a little like he’d been cut off.

He listened to the sermon, but not really, so his gaze wandered, and he looked again to the not-so-holy-book, now closed, sitting on the back of the pew behind him.

And he thought maybe the whole thing wasn’t so bad after all.

Eloise wanted to take the long way back. So they went west on Ditmars and Cedric followed Eloise, so they walked on the north side of the street and when they had passed a few streets going up on the right, and a whole bunch of cars had passed them on the left, she eventually took a right-hand turn and she seemed like she knew exactly where she wanted to go.

Cedric had learned a while ago why sometimes the air in Astoria smelled rank, as some would say but he would not, not anymore, like ‘fire and brimstone’.

A long time ago, when not so many people lived here, the people who made decisions decided that on the water, somewhere between Queens and Rikers, was just as good a place as any to build a sewage treatment plant. And perhaps that wasn’t so much an option but a necessity, because every day there were more and more bodies in the city that never slept and even if they didn’t sleep, there were other things they still did and even if they did not or could not clean up after themselves, someone else would have to do it for them eventually.

So they collected the money together and built a place that had huge holding tanks that held all the water and muck that had to be treated and cleaned and sanitized before it could be used again. And the cleaning came by way of making it even more putrid first because they poured in chemicals and solutions and populations of microscopic organisms and all kinds of things that were even more vile than whatever the human beings had excreted as waste and flushed down the toilet.

And when the wind changed and swept all these scents into the air, someone might make a joke and say double double toil and trouble and that somewhere a witch must be brewing something really foul in her cauldron and if it were a full moon, and even if it wasn’t, they should all keep an eye turned over their shoulders because some old lady with green skin and warts and hair like hay might be trying to slip them a fast one.

And by now, Cedric wasn’t old, but he wasn’t young anymore either, so he knew better.

“I hope it’s not too macabre,” Eloise said, “but I really like cemeteries.”

Cedric looked at her but said nothing, because she was smiling a little, and looking up and toward the sky, and he knew she had more things she wanted to say. He liked to listen, and he liked to listen to Eloise because she picked pretty words, and simple words that were still more pretty, and she arranged them like flowers in glass on a table.

“This one’s very special,” she said. “There are people buried here that fought in the Revolution; people who died a long, long time ago. People that—”

They stopped, because she stopped, and she looked up at the wall that forbade their entrance because the cemetery was on a hill that was far older than the street or sidewalk on which they stood, and when he looked up at the fence, there was barbed wire all around.

“People that don’t have anyone to mourn them anymore, because everyone who knew them are long gone too.”

“But I like to think that’s OK,” she said a little brighter, before the heavy things settled. “Because maybe somewhere, somehow… They’re together again.”

Cedric didn’t say anything, because he didn’t have anything to say, and the things she was saying were painful, though he was trying to think through the pain. Even if he liked to listen to Eloise, sometimes the things she said made him very tired, and he had an instinct to hide from those things.

“I don’t think I believe in eternal damnation,” she said, suddenly, and Cedric just looked at her, searching.

“I think it’s just a story, a fairytale made up by people,” she said. “A story to scare people into doing what’s right, because sometimes people need a good kick in the pants.”

She laughed, weakly. “I don’t know if doing a good deed because you’re afraid of being punished is still actually a good deed, but… Sometimes people need a little help; instruction, maybe. Encouragement.”

“I read Dante,” she said, looking somewhere else. “And it was a fun read, but—”

Cedric listened, but knew there were holes between what she said and what he could receive.

“I don’t think I believe in Hell. I don’t think God would want His creations to suffer, because He’s good; He must be good,” she said.

“Purgatory…?” she added quickly, laughing a little and looking around. “Well that one might be real — too real — but I think… I think…”

Her eyes were like stars, burning white-hot amidst the darkness, and casting their own light through the shadow of the graveyard. “I think we all end up reunited in Heaven eventually, once we learn what we needed to learn.”

“El—” he said; her name, because he saw her then, because he didn’t know what else to say, because he liked the way it sounded, and because his heart was getting tangled in tiny little tight pieces; ribbons that had been pulled so tight he wasn’t sure he could ever get them flat again.

“I’m going to leave soon,” Eloise said, looking at him with her eyes. “I have a little money saved up, and it’s not much, but it’ll last me a few months and that should be enough for me to figure out what I’m doing.”

That look hurt, and he wanted to look away, but held fast.

“I don’t think I’m going to move in with Zahra,” she said quickly, before he could get out a word. “She’s got her own thing going on, she’s making friends, she’s studying… If I go there…”

She frowned a little, and continued. “If I go there, it won’t be much different from what Myrtle would do. She’d fuss and wring her hands and worry about me and she’d never get anything done.”

Cedric did something then, and it was a stupid thing he hadn’t thought through, and because it was so stupid he afterward regretted it for years and years but once he’d done a thing, it was done, and it couldn’t be taken back because Mages and Shifters and even Mortals could do a lot of things but the one thing they couldn’t do was change the stones that were laid on the road that trailed behind them.

He took her hands in his.

“We’ll go together,” he said, looking at her though it hurt him. “You don’t have to work; I’ll work. I’ll get a job and—”

She pulled her hands out of his grasp and looked down and away and said, “No.”

And when she did that, there was a shattering between them.

“No, Cedric,” she said again. “I can’t let you do that.”

And then he did a thing that was far and above even more stupid than what he’d done, because she wasn’t looking at him anymore, so he should have known better but he was in pain, and when he was in pain sometimes he did more stupid things that didn’t make any damn sense but when he was in pain he just cried and writhed and tried to get away from it.

He was then a dumb creature, not like a human, but something smaller and weaker and far more brutish, a thing that bites back when it’s kicked.

And so he said, to the side of her face, while she couldn’t look at him, “Eloise… I love you.”

And for the third time that day, because he was a damn fool, and because he was a stupid kid who did stupid things, he added the worst thing of all because he was trying to plead and bargain with her and he added, “You don’t have to worry; I — I’ll take care of you.”

She broke, then.

“No!” she said, forcefully, but still not looking into his eyes, “I don’t want you to take care of me!”

“For once I want to take care of myself!”

Eloise walked away, following the trajectory of the path they had been taking but stopped along the way, and when she left, Cedric just stood there, still more stupidly, next to the wall of brick and mortar and cement that had kept them from entering one of the oldest graveyards in Queens.

Cedric wasn’t crying, exactly, but his face would twist up in a knot from time to time and if it had been a rag he might have taken it in his hands and used his strength and wrung out the water that was otherwise refusing to flow.

But as hard as he might have wished, his face was not a rag, and, like his heart, didn’t do what he wanted it to do when he wanted it to be done. So instead, he got on the subway and left and when it careened out of the station and headed south, he might have been looking at things but he probably wasn’t seeing much at all.

He wasn’t any better by the time he got to Times Square, and because he was weary and tired and hurting, he wasnt walking like he normally would have, and was sort of lilting about and having a hard time going at an even pace, and when he wasnt seeing straight, he was in the tunnel and ran into someone somewhere and the guy looked back at him and said, “hey asshole look where the fuck you goin next time!”

Cedric was convinced that Davian might have changed the locks.

Those words hung over him like fog, like chains.

‘Get out,’ he’d said. ‘Get out of my house,’ he had said, quite clearly, with force, with emphasis, with perfect diction.

And he was right, wasn’t he? It was his house, and maybe, at some point after that bitter exchange, Davian would have remembered. He would have remembered that it was his house, and he didn’t need any boys or friends or anyone at all, and least of all the one named Cedric.

But that wasn’t how it happened, because when Cedric got to the house in Manhattan with the green doors and the vine-covered scarlet brick and the purple car out front, he put his key into the lock and it turned just as easily as it ever had.

And Cedric walked right in.